Hiraga intro

After trying my hand at JLH and Pass, it is natural for me to move on to one of the other class A “design greats”, namely Jean Hiraga. Hiraga is probably most known for his “Le Monstre” design – a small 8W class A amplifier – and for his use of massive amounts of capacitance in the power supplies. This is then often taken to even more extreme levels by audiophiles of today that can get large capacitors relatively cheaply compared to the cost in the seventies when the designs were published.

I have already laid out my own PCB version of the “Monstre” design but it is not built yet, so for starters I have settled for a version of the Hiraga “Super 30W” amplifier based on PCBs from ebay seller jimsaudio. A spare Modushop 3U enclosure and a leftover 2x18V/500VA toroid from my Pass labs projects make up the main components otherwise. I am still missing a few parts but if I am lucky Santa might bring those within the next couple of weeks – and the Christmas break should bring some time off work for building as well 😀

There’s lots of info around the internet on the Hiraga designs, but TCAAS as usual is a good resource as it has the translated versions of the original Hiraga publications – go check it out! 🙂